


for years or for hours

by indigoat



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Cold-Blooded Crowley (Good Omens), Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Sharing a Bed, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:46:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigoat/pseuds/indigoat
Summary: Winter comes quickly the year of the non-apocalypse.





	for years or for hours

**Author's Note:**

> Yes it's the wee hours of the morning, yes I haven't proofread this, and yes I am publishing it anyway.  
> Thank you to Hozier's beautiful song "In A Week" for powering me through writing this when I ought to have been sleeping and also providing a title.

Winter comes quickly the year of the non-apocalypse, frost settling overnight on trees still laden with autumn’s red and gold leaves. Aziraphale’s bookshop becomes, as it always does this time of year, a place for passersby to duck into when the weather takes a turn for the worse, a place to wait for the bus to arrive without a chill settling into their fragile human bones. Aziraphale gripes to Crowley about this in the same perfunctory way that he gripes about the demon driving too fast or talking to him when he’s trying to read. Sure, wet, muddy people coming dripping into his shop isn’t exactly welcome, especially when they try to peruse the shelves with soggy gloved hands, but Crowley knows Aziraphale prefers them to visitors who show genuine interest in purchasing something from him. 

On this night, the dark blankets the city early, and Crowley is lounging aimlessly in his flat, waiting, watching the clock’s second-hand move in infuriatingly slow increments. The dim lights make the view outside his window an impenetrable black, like this is all there is, like if he stepped out the door, he’d find the entire universe empty. 

Year after year, the winter season always manages to settle chilly and lonesome over him—it’s not the dark, which he likes, it’s just that it’s so _cold_ —he’s a demon, he’s cold-blooded, he’s meant to pop up to Earth for a bit of lurking, a bit of havoc-wreaking, and then pop back down to Hell and bask in the hellfire like some oversized reptile. _Not_ spend six millennia taking whatever shit weather the Earth decides to throw at him (he still hasn’t forgiven London for what he was put through in 1795). The cold makes him lethargic, slow; time can pass by him so quickly for most of the time but winter always seems to drag on and on.

Finally, the clock makes it round to ten to eight. Crowley heaves himself off the black leather couch he’s been splayed out on for the past few hours and walks towards the door, his car keys materializing in his hands as he goes.

Aziraphale is waiting outside his bookshop, the “closed” sign up in the front door window. The Bentley screeches to a crooked halt and Crowley reaches over to open the car’s passenger door for the angel.

“How was your day, angel?” he asks as Aziraphale slides in, swerving back into the street with a careless turn of the wheel. “Made any sales?”

“It was perfectly pleasant,” Aziraphale answers primly, ignoring Crowley’s jeer. “What about you, dear?” His eyes widen as the Bentley skids across the street. “Crowley! You can’t go that fast, it’s _icy!_ ” 

“Ah, she can handle a little ice,” Crowley laughs, speeding up a bit. “And I’m going starkers, I really am, it’s too bloody cold.” He passes a car out, narrowly missing a collision with another coming in the opposite direction. 

“I’ve told you, you should go on holiday somewhere warm,” Aziraphale says to Crowley over the top of the car as they climb out. He’s parallel parked (one of his own demonic creeations) in front of a small Indian restaurant Aziraphale had been wanting to check out.

“Too much effort,” Crowley shrugs, holding the door open for Aziraphale. But really, he doesn’t care to be that far away from the angel, especially now.

Dinner is nice. It’s always nice, for Crowley, just to sit and listen to Aziraphale talk, to watch him exclaim over the ingenious little ways humans raised a matter of survival to an art. He even consents to order an entrée rather than just a starter—he had never liked to feel full, was never comfortable with how sluggish it made him feel, like he wouldn’t be able to flee at the first sign of danger. But there isn’t any danger anymore, there’s just him, and Aziraphale, sharing a meal and the whole world, too. 

After dinner they retreat to the back room of the bookshop, pop open some aged French wine from Aziraphale’s stores, settle into their routine carved a hundred times over into the passage of time. It is so warm here—the burning candles, the soft glow from antique lamps, the gentle heat that radiates off Aziraphale sitting across from him on the couch. Crowley thinks it incredible that even after six thousand years they still find things to talk about, and comfortable silence to lapse into together. 

What is truly incredible is how much they haven’t said to one another over such a long span of time, and when the silence stretches on too long, beginning to border what one might call intimate, Crowley breaks it.

“I’d best be buggering off, then,” he says, voice too loud for the room. He sits up and stretches, joints cracking, and Aziraphale watches him, something like consternation written across the features of his fair face.

Crowley is almost to the door when Aziraphale speaks.

“Isn’t it cold, in your flat?”

He turns in the doorway, not sure how to answer. Even in his slightly tipsy state, he can sense that the question isn’t just that, it’s a question snowball, and Crowley is wary of melting away the pretense. 

“Yeah, I suppose. Not much colder than anywhere else this time of year,” he finally says, watching Aziraphale from behind his glasses. 

“It’s much warmer here.” 

“I guess.”

Aziraphale stands up from the couch, crosses the room to stand in front of him.

“Why don’t you stay?”

Crowley doesn’t know what to do with that, he really doesn’t. He’s choking on all of the words they don’t say. “What are you asking me?” he asks, quiet desperation creeping into his voice. Aziraphale reaches forward brushes the tips of his plump, manicured fingers to the back of Crowley’s hand. Crowley’s eyes flutter involuntarily at the contact, his breath hitching in his chest.

“I want… I want you to stay with me?” 

There is a tremble in the questioning lilt of Aziraphale’s voice as he asks it, and it is in that revelation that Crowley feels something shifting, as if a damn were being opened, finally, finally. He pulls off his glasses so he can meet Aziraphale’s eyes properly, his voice coming out achingly soft. 

“Of course, angel. Of course I’ll stay.”

Aziraphale lets out a rather wet laugh, a gentle smile spreading slowly across his face: relief, tenderness, love so strong it’s almost _palpable_ , something Crowley can feel though they aren’t even touching.

And then suddenly they are—their foreheads have pressed together, Aziraphale’s hand is cupping Crowley’s jaw, his thumb brushing over his lips, Crowley leans into his touch, presses a chaste kiss against his thumb that nonetheless causes Aziraphale to let out a small, soft gasp. 

They go hesitantly, hopefully, together up to Aziraphale’s flat above his shop, and Crowley mumbles, “I didn’t know you had a bed,” and Aziraphale goes pink, admits, “it’s rather new, actually.” 

Aziraphale has his affinity for food, for books, but the human pleasure Crowley subscribes to most enthusiastically is sleep. He’s got a bed in his flat, though he doesn’t actually need one; lazing around in bed for hours is his idea of decadence. And now he’s discovered an additional, wonderful dimension to his personal indulgence—sharing it with another.

Aziraphale is warm, and Crowley is warmed being with him. One of Aziraphale’s arms is wrapped around Crowley’s thin shoulder, his hand resting against the nape of his neck, fingers moving gently through his hair. Crowley has a hand pressed against Aziraphale’s chest, feeling the slow beat of his human heart, watching his eyelids flutter. 

They don’t so much sleep as fall in and out of some sort of consciousness. By the time weak winter sunlight is streaming through the window, Crowley’s breathing has turned slow and steady, but when Aziraphale stirs he opens his eyes, just to see the angel remember where he is, just to see happiness spill onto his face all over again.

“Good morning, my dear,” Aziraphale says softly.

Crowley burrows more deeply under the blankets. “Mhm… g’morning, angel.”

He hears Aziraphale shift and sit up, grimacing at how cold the room’s gotten overnight. 

“I’m going to go put the kettle on, would you like any?”

“Yes, please.”

He watches Aziraphale as he climbs out of bed and pulls on a soft blue dressing gown. Closing his eyes again, he mumbles, “I covered you for a miracle in Florence in the sixteenth century, d’you remember? Took a detour through Orvieto because Lucas Signorelli was working on a fresco for the chapel and I wanted to see how inaccurate his depiction of hell was, angel, he made it _cold_.” He looks over at Aziraphale. “Why would hell be cold? We’d all get sluggish and slow and head office wouldn’t like that too much.”

Aziraphale makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat as he finishes tying the sash of his gown. “He’s Italian, Crowley, what else did you expect?”

Crowley laughs softly, watching Aziraphale leave the room, then turns over to claim the angel’s still-warmed spot in bed, and waits for him to return.

**Author's Note:**

> This got away from me a bit but I'm just going to leave it as is. Shoutout to these two tender supernatural entities for filling me with so much emotion. Thank you for reading x

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] for years or for hours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21121622) by [Literarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literarion/pseuds/Literarion)




End file.
